Deploying .bpmn file instead of .bpmn20 + deployment prep

[jjfutt]

Hello:

My questions are based on as things are currently documented on the Activiti Documentation page, and how things are working in version 5.9. My two questions are deployment related. In version 5.9, after creating the .bpmn file in Eclipse, we have to run the Eclipse plugin command "Create Deployment Artifacts" that produces the 'tempbar' and 'deployment' folders in the project with deployment artifacts in it (.bar, and .bpmn20.xml file)

Question 1: As we roll out the Eclipse-Activiti Studio to our developers, we want to expose them to only the bpmn files. We want them to check their projects into version control, and allow a central process to download the artifacts, PROGRAMMATICALLY create deployment artifacts from it, and then deploy that to execution engine. Is there a way to run the "Create Deployment Artifacts" outside of the Eclipse environment? Would you recommend us to reverse engineer what Eclipse plugin does and implement it outside of Eclipse?

Question 2: For simpler processes, that only have .bpmn definitions, do we even hav to create deployment artifacts. Can we directly deploy .bpmn file to the engine? Is this  a feature that is being enabled in version 5.10 or beyond?

Thanks.

[naag]

You can take a look at RepositoryService.createDeployment(), which works just as well on 5.9. With it you can deploy just a .bpmn20.xml file. In case you have a .bpmn file, just rename it to .bpmn20.xml so it can be deployed (not sure if this is still necessary or not).

A "deployment archive" can easily be built via scripts, it's just a ZIP after all.